How Did That Sun Get Out [Paperback]

Roger Burkholder (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 10, 2000

"A bit difficult to get into at first, but things become clear as the story develops and as the young boy, C. J., matures. Well worth reading."-Dr. Hanna Newcombe, Peace Research"Fascinating."-Dr. Larry LockridgeBelonging to the first generation of collegiate students never to have experienced a time without the possibility of nuclear war, C. J., Jack, and Leah, in their sometimes assured and other times hesitant movements toward each other, are struggling in the direction of a future they have always known they may not have. Then a crisis is inadvertently brought to all three lives by a psychiatrist involved in a pursuit of definitions of global sanity. It is a crisis the psychiatrist himself comes to share and which soon begins to give voice to what had been silences central to our time. Respectfully nonviolent, this coming-of-age novel builds into an insightful and feelingly true exploration of quandaries basic to our era and ultimately touching all our lives, if only indirectly.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Deeply moving. Well worth reading, even in the 2000s because humankind is still endangered and still seeking escape..." -- Peace Research June, 2000

"The pacifism in the book is backed up with reality. Should be in every library." -- The Meria Heller Show

It's a fascinating book. The writing is vivid, with a strong sense of time and place. Ultimately it's very moving. -- Larry Lockridge, author of Shade of the Raintree

Remarkable personal testimony suggesting that peaceful patterns of life are here to take, if we but choose to see them. -- News, July 2001 of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Peace Bureau

From the Author

I have sought constructively to break a variety of silences most of which pertain to the central effects the stockpiling of nuclear weapons has had on our lives, as well as its attendant assumption that humankind is such only massive amounts of weapons can keep us from war.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 486 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse; 1st edition (August 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595002579
• ISBN-13: 978-0595002573
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,310,814 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a Normal State of Affairs, February 25, 2001

By 

Mr G H Farebrother (Hailsham, Sussex United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How Did That Sun Get Out (Paperback)

Engrossing experimental use of language and compelling use of interior streams of consciousness as the characters attempt to come to grips with their personal lives and the political situation. Over all hangs the nuclear cloud which explicitly challenged that generation and which ours is all too liable to see it as a normal state of affairs.

5.0 out of 5 stars Midwest Book Review - cryptic and compelling, May 25, 2003

By 

Laurel Johnson (Kansas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How Did That Sun Get Out (Paperback)

The author is a writer, artist, and pacifist who incorporates long held non-violent beliefs into his work. Science, art, and the humanities are woven skillfully into this fictional story of learning, maturing, and friendship. His well-developed characters represent the first generation who realized destruction of all life on Earth has become possible through nuclear means.

C.J. Rongo is the inquisitive, idealistic progeny of an equally idealistic father who died young. C.J.'s father seemingly wills himself to die in the years following his military service. In a poignant letter to his toddler son - saved for C.J. to read as he starts college - the elder Rongo states his generation has increased evil by glorifying war and abandoned the decency of their futures. The college age C.J. has difficulty verbalizing an endless stream of thoughts, scientific ideas, and life questions but he is far from ignorant. Chapter One was difficult to follow at first, until I realized that this was my introduction to C.J. and his inability to express himself with eloquence.

The character of Colin Tsampas is introduced quite effectively through journal writings kept from 1945 through 1975. Colin is at first a student of psychiatry and then a practicing psychiatrist who simply cannot accept the times in which he lives. He questions why mankind does not create life enhancing opportunities with and for each other. His goal as a psychiatrist is to teach people how to be friends, how to care for one another, and how to love enduringly - traits seldom dealt with in human literature or education.

Jack Tane is a law student struggling to make sense out of a world he cannot believe in. His father is successful, old fashioned in the sense that he is an unquestioning patriot who supports political intrigue, war, and the American way of life to a maddening degree. Jack's family life has been superficial, an endless empty charade. Jack finds his upper middle class life unacceptable, and begins to question the wisdom of perpetuating such a life through the practice of law. He feels no way of life could be good and necessary enough to protect with such savage possibilities - nuclear weapons.

Leah Tetrao is ethereally lovely, desperate to make a lasting mark on the world through personal expression. When acting does not produce the results she seeks, Leah turns to art as her medium. Her parents are supportive, but their impending divorce is the final straw in an already unpredictable world. The world she hoped to influence through her creativity no longer exists.

Leah, C.J., Colin, and Jack are thrown together in sometimes uneasy alliances as they all four separately and together seek an acceptable reality. Goals and hopes are thrown off balance in the turmoil that was the 1960s in America. The looming threat of nuclear holocaust, the snuffing out in rapid succession of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the VietNam conflict take a lasting toll on four friends who cannot or will not adapt to such national horrors.

C.J. does not want to take courses in subjects he cannot personally care about. He finds life too complicated and drops out of one course after another. His relationship with Leah suffers because of his confusion.
Colin lives in despair due to his belief that man should be fighting the enemies we all share - hunger, cold, disease - instead of destroying each other. Jack's mind and health are nearly destoyed by his dawning realization that he cannot change the world, and learning an awful truth about his family. In C.J.'s practical approach to life and living, Jack finally finds personal peace. Leah finds her own peace in solitary protest, motherhood, and artistic expression.

I found How Did That Sun Get Out to be engrossing in a cryptic way I cannot explain. The characters were well developed and the writing sometimes breath taking. But nothing has really changed since the 1960s, politically or otherwise. War machines still make war seem patriotic and right. Despite medical and scientific advances, humans still suffer disease and starvation in a world awash in money, medicine, and food. I could not help but wonder at the end of this book, what C.J., Jack, Colin, and Leah must be thinking today.